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When preparing for a dinner party, NearSt co-founder Max Kreijn had a “literal lightbulb moment” - the bulb in his living room blew and he needed a replacement, fast. Turning to the internet, he found it was great at suggesting places he could get one online, but useless at finding one he could find at a local shop.

"Today, we have to ask: how is it that having a product delivered always seems like the most convenient option?" Nick Brackenbury, his colleague and fellow co-founder, told the audience at WIRED Retail 2016. Founded in April 2015, London-based NearSt is trying to enable bricks-and-mortar shops to compete with the likes of Amazon. And it all started with books.

While some bookstores are morphing into coffee shops, bars and event spaces, Brackenbury has identified another way that they can reverse decades of decline: convenience. The NearSt app lets people find local stores that sell the book they want and find out how to get there.

"It has to be fast, it has to be convenient, it has to be mobile - and it probably needs emoji as well," he explained. While other startups working in retail focus on improving logistics, NearSt is embracing the ordered chaos of local retailers. "The products on the shelves of our local shops are still totally invisible to our phones," said Brackenbury. "Retail is a messy place, it's chaotic, we don't know what's in our stores, what's on the shelves. This feels totally incompatible with the way e-commerce runs."

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NearSt collects between three and five million inventory updates from its London-based retailers every day. While it started with just books, it’s now expanding into half a dozen new retail categories to cover more of the high street. Shops show live inventory through the NearSt app and people can pay for and collect items instantly from shops within walking distance of their location or pay for a courier to deliver it within the hour.

"They’re not using new technology, they're not adding an iPad at the till. But the shoppers don't need to know that," Brackenbury explained. So while Amazon and other online retailers focus on fine-tuning logistics to get items from warehouses to customers more and more quickly, NearSt is working with what’s been in place for hundreds of years. "We think the next big innovation in retail is having products already where customers are, when they search for it. No shipping, no logistics."